The Ice Storm & GR

[Dave Monroe]

I was starting ca. June 1972 ...

June 17, 1972
Five men, one of whom says he used to work for the
CIA, are arrested at 2:30 a.m. trying to bug the
offices of the Democratic National Committee at the
Watergate hotel and office complex. Post Story

June 19, 1972

A GOP security aide is among the Watergate burglars,
The Washington Post reports. Former attorney general
John Mitchell, head of the Nixon reelection campaign,
denies any link to the operation....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/onpolitics/watergate/chronology.htm

... and ending by February 1973 ...

1973   "Gravity's Rainbow" published Feb 28,
universally hailed as classic

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/faq/BargerFAQ.html

--- Paul Mackin <paul.mackin at verizon.net> wrote:

> 
> On Aug 31, 2006, at 1:33 PM, Dave Monroe wrote:
> 
> > I waffled on this earlier, but, while on the one
> hand,
> > Pynchon had the better part of a year betwixt the
> > scandal's emergence and the publication of GR, he
> was
> > clearly not a fan nearly a decade earlier, writing
> of
> > Sick Dick and The Volkswagens and Peter Pinguid
> (cf.
> > Slick Dick) in The Crying of Lot 49.  It was
> mentioned
> > that he'd changed the epigraph to Pt. IV to that
> > Nixon, uh, quote.  Source on that?  Reliable?  At
> any
> > rate, I'm still not sure these anything
> SPECIFICALLY
> > Watergatian, but if anyone spots anything, well
> ...
> >
> > --- John Carvill <JCarvill at algsoftware.com> wrote:
> >>
> >> That's good. But I think I'd have to agree with
> >> Paul M that GR was probably published too early
> for
> >> Watergate to have been incorporated....
> 
> 
> 
> Just to follow up I looked up the  date on which one
> of the   
> burglars, John McCord, hoping to get a lighter
> sentence,  famously  
> informed Judge John Sirica that the other defendants
> had pleaded  
> guilty under duress--that they  had committed
> perjury  and that  
> others were involved in the break-in. He  claimed 
> that thy lied at  
> the urging of John Dean, counsel  to the President,
> and John  
> Mitchell, the  Attorney-General. The date was March
> 19, 1973. This  
> was effectively the start of "Watergate" as the
> straw that broke  
> Nixon's back. Before that nobody saw the  burglary
> as having much  
> significance. It had hardly figured at all in the
> '72 reelection  
> campaign, for example.
> 
> So Pynchon might have had a short window of
> opportunity to refer  
> directly or indirectly to "Watergate" but it would
> have been very  
> slight. (depending on the date of publication, which
> I haven't looked  
> up yetP
> 
> Unless of course he could see into the  future.
> 
> 
> 
> 


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